Young Republican to vote for Trump

Posted by Donovan Quintero | Nov 2, 2020 | Election 2020 |

GALLUP

Ashleigh Joe, 19, from Standing Rock, New Mexico, is sure her vote for President Donald Trump is the right choice.

The first-time voter was out with her family on Saturday in Gallup to show their support for the Republican candidate. Wearing a Trump-Pence T-shirt, the teenager said a research in high school about Trump led her to become a supporter.

“I was in my history class,” Joe, a kinesiology major at the New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, said. “We were to do a biography on presidents and we could choose a president and we ended up having a presidential debate.”

At the time, Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were running against one another for the nation’s highest seat. And since no one wanted to be him, she “stepped up” to be him in the class debate.

Joe said she did an eight-page essay on Trump, preparing for her debate against a classmate who played Hillary Clinton.

“That’s how I ended up learning between Republicans and Democrats,” she said.

She didn’t win the class debate, but she said it helped her decide who she was going to support from that point on.

“I started seeing myself leaning towards the Republican side,” Joe said.

Joe and dozens of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence supporters met on the west side of Gallup and prepared to do a rally around the city. Her father, Jason Joe, decorated the back of his pickup truck with three flags, including one with a caricature of Trump dressed like the popular movie icon John Rambo.

The young Republican said her parents told her it was up to her which party she wanted to align herself with.

But being a young teen adult, Joe said she still had much to learn.

“My dad is helping me along the way to understand these things,” she said.

Her father, Jason, an Army veteran and a staunch Republican, was certain about two things.

“People talk about free stuff, free health care,” he said. “We are Native, we already get that and it’s not very good.

“If people who are not Native want to know what free health care and free education looks like, ask us, we know,” he said. “We have some of the lowest test scores in the United States.”

According to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s website, the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as the Obamacare, has given 100 million people in the U.S. health care coverage.

Trump has made several attempts to repeal the ACA. Currently, Trump and 18 Republican state attorneys general are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the ACA as unconstitutional. A hearing is scheduled on Nov. 10 to hear oral arguments.

For the 19-year-old, she said she is not sure what Trump would do for the Navajo Nation if he were to be re-elected.

“That’s kind of a hard question,” she said. “I have not really thought about that so far. I’m still looking into it.”